Why Pale Blue Dot generates feelings of cosmic insignificance
60 comments
·April 28, 2025saltcured
I feel like one should already have this understanding of cosmic insignificance from multiple kinds of knowledge that I remember encountering in grade school.
Just looking up and knowing those are not just stars but full galaxies. Learning a little about geological time spans versus paleontology versus written human history. From those, it should be obvious already just how ephemeral our lives are in time and space.
I got another (fractal?) feeling of insignificance when I realized "ancient" poets, philosophers, and historians were describing basically the same emotional and metaphysical concerns that we grapple with today. We cram some extra modern knowledge into our heads, but the fundamental cognitive life isn't really changing much.
tessellated
> not just stars but full galaxies
https://esahubble.org/images/heic0611b/
Take in this picture for cosmic insignificance, and then check out what JWST did a couple of years ago.
No, the stars you see are all in our galaxy. The most visible galaxy (to the unaided eye) is Andromeda.
divbzero
The Pale Blue Dot is an incredible image but actually understates our cosmic insignificance. Voyager 1 hadn’t left the Solar System at the time and is still light years from our nearest stellar neighbors. Even our farthest stellar neighbors—the individual stars that form constellations in our night sky—are situated in just one section of the Orion arm of the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is, of course, just one galaxy among hundreds of billions.
nancyminusone
Right. Well can we have your liver then?
mightyham
I've recently been reading the Pensees, so it feels timely that this article was posted. I'll add here a couple more practical pieces of advice that Pascal offers for dealing with what he considers the wretchedness of human experience:
"One must know oneself [reference to Socrates]. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves to regulate one's life, and there is nothing better"
"Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences."
divbzero
What exactly is the “sunbeam” in the Pale Blue Dot? Is it a real astronomical phenomenon or an imaging artifact?
susam
The "sunbeam" in Pale Blue Dot is imaging artefact indeed! From <https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/solar-system-portrait-ear...>:
"Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun."
See also <https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss85590.042/?sp=17>:
"Because of the way that sunlight is scattered off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special importance to our small planet. But this is just an accident of geometry and optics. The Sun emits its radiation equitably to all directions in space."
Also, from the posted article itself:
"Indeed, even the hint of perceptual salience – the sunbeam in which Earth is suspended – isn’t a genuine feature of Earth’s position in the cosmos but an artefact of the image itself."
hydrogen7800
>the sunbeam in which Earth is suspended – isn’t a genuine feature of Earth’s position in the cosmos but an artefact of the image itself.
Toward the end of the article.
indoordin0saur
Stanley Kubrick messed that one up and turned up one of the stage lights too high.
EDIT: Guys... I'm kidding, c'mon.
aabajian
The other existential question I've asked is, "How do I know any of you are conscious?" It may be in fact, that I am the only one who is conscious.
aezart
Other people will occasionally verbalize the same kind of thoughts that I've had yet never spoken aloud. That's enough to make me accept that we're at least thinking in the same way.
griffzhowl
This is known as "the problem of other minds" in philosophy
dwaltrip
The next question would then be why are you singled out?
The lack of any reason for that makes it seem quite unlikely in my book :)
ashoeafoot
Imagine giving a animal a mirror that then turns into a map that allows them to zoom out to pale blue dot levels. The ability to be shook by that , would be interesting who has that.
tchock23
I have this image as the wallpaper on my phone. Weirdly calms me down when I get anxious about something trivial.
moritonal
"When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says 'You are here'."
iJohnDoe
Obviously, everyone generates feelings in different ways. However, Pale Blue Dot I would hope generates feeling that we're all on this rock together. We're all human and we should all be on the same side of working together for our species.
Astronauts that have seen earth from afar get a profound feeling of love for Earth and humanity, and that we're all in this together (should be all in this together).
There is a beautiful scene about this that articulates it well. It is a NASA documentary about a female astronaut that sees Earth from space for the first time. I wish I could find which movie it is.
photochemsyn
The Egyptian-Greek-Roman notions of the cosmos and their related Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious traditions seem to have a much harder time accepting the scientific revelations of the depths of time and space than Buddhist and Hindu philosophies, which have vast notions of time (though perhaps not space) baked in, eg:
> "Imagine a great mountain of solid iron, one hundred leagues high and wide. If once every hundred years a man were to brush it lightly with a cloth, the mountain would be worn away before a kalpa ends. And yet many kalpas have already passed." (Buddhist Sutra description of a kalpa)
As secularism became more prevalent in Europe and America, some new voices appeared - eg, HP Lovecraft, one of the first writers to really dive into the consequences of the discovery of the immensity of time and space. It's likely difficult for people who've been taught their entire lives that they're the entire point of existence and the most significant element in a cosmic story, to have material scientific reality make such a mockery of that notion, and indeed many have thus fled from that 'deadly light' into what Lovecraft called 'the peace and safety of a new dark age.'
mightyham
This is definitely not true from a philosophical level. Contemplation of an infinite god/cosmos, and the seemingly infinite nature of time are core aspects of early Greek philosophy, which heavily influenced the philosophy of each of the Abrahamic religions.
As you started alluding to, the reason the west may seem more fearful of the infinite is likely because of widespread secularism, not western religion. An infinite cosmos is not nearly as scary to someone whose life purpose is appeasing an all good/infinite/timeless/immutable being, as it is for someone whose life purpose is managing their dopamine levels.
Somewhat related: being someone who grew up in the west, I've always wondered how Hindus and Buddhists deal with evidence of the big bang. It fits fairly naturally into Abrahamic traditions that believe in a beginning to the universe. Though, it is fairly important to the philosophy of those eastern traditions that time and space (samsara) has no beginning or end.
jimbokun
The description of a kalpa made me think of the "Heaven Sent" episode of Dr Who:
As is so often the case, the late great Douglas Adams had a relevant quote:
"And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her.
And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion."